In an interview with Dale Gavlak, a
Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press and Mint Press News,
Syrian rebels tacitly implied that they were responsible for last week’s
chemical attack. Some information could not immediately be
independently verified.

“From
numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and
their families….many believe that certain rebels received chemical
weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and
were responsible for carrying out the (deadly) gas attack,” he writes in
the article.

Documents provided by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden
show the scope and scale of Washington’s cyber-attacks have been growing
as US intelligence services break into and disrupt computer networks in
other countries.
The documents obtained by The Washington Post were part of a
multi-volume intelligence budget which showed the United States has
built an “intelligence-gathering colossus” with a whopping “black
budget” of $52.6 billion for the current fiscal year.

The US has little doubt the Syrian government used chemical weapons
against civilians and any decision to open the site to UN inspectors
comes “too late to be credible,” a senior US official said Sunday, Aug.
25.
The official made clear the Syrian government's agreement to let United
Nations inspectors visit the site of an alleged chemical weapons attack
was inadequate."At this juncture, any belated decision by the regime to grant access
to the UN team would be considered too late to be credible, including
because the evidence available has been significantly corrupted as a
result of the regime's persistent shelling and other intentional actions
over the last five days," the official said.

Egypt's disgraced former President Hosni Mubarak will be released
from jail soon, after prosecutors cleared him in a corruption case, his
lawyer said on Monday, dropping a new bombshell on a nation in turmoil.The most populous Arab country is already enduring the bloodiest
internal conflict in its modern history as the army, which deposed
President Mohamed Morsi on July 3 after huge protests against him,
cracks down on his Muslim Brotherhood.

Soldiers have entered a mosque in central Cairo where
Islamist protesters had taken refuge after another day of deadly clashes
across Egypt.

A tense stand-off remains at the Fateh mosque in Ramses Square with
Egyptian footage appearing to show the security forces negotiating with
the protesters, attempting to persuade them to leave.
Hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters are believed to have
barricaded themselves inside the mosque, which has been turned into a
makeshift field hospital for the wounded and a morgue for some of those
killed in the protests.
Four Irish citizens - children of Hussein Halawa, the Imam of Ireland's
biggest mosque in Dublin - are among those in the building.

National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden wants to set
the record straight after individuals associated with his father have,
in his words, "misled" journalists into “printing false claims about my
situation.”In an emailed statement to The Huffington Post, Snowden said that
neither his father Lon Snowden, his father’s lawyer Bruce Fein, nor
Fein's wife and spokeswoman Mattie Fein “represent me in any way.” “None of them have been or are involved in my current situation, and
this will not change in the future,” Snowden said of his father and the
Feins. “I ask journalists to understand that they do not possess any
special knowledge regarding my situation or future plans, and not to
exploit the tragic vacuum of my father's emotional compromise for the
sake of tabloid news.”